this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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As you said: socialism is an idealistic system. however, humans are far from ideal beings. even if you find the ideal group that agrees on their flavour of socialism and manages to actually do it - there is no guarantee, that this will stay as it is. as you mentioned yourself: humans change - sadly not always for the better.
don't take my word for it. watch a documentary about a bigger commune (small village, houses scattered through a forest and such), or even better: visit one. They all will tell you that heavy moderation is needed. not everyone is allowed to join, sometimes old members even have to go. if you try to scale up these systems to the size of even a small country, they will fail.
I did not. I said you were practicing idealism, the philosophy that states that ideas create reality, rather than Materialism, which states that reality creates ideas. The idea of a nebulous, unchanging, static "Human Nature" is idealism and ahistorical.
We are not talking about Communes, we are talking about Communism, with central planning and whatnot.
We are talking about communism, agreed. That means we are also talking about communes: small(ish) groups of people who want to live together in a communist system. I come from a practical approach: if you want to do something, it needs to work under sterile laboratory conditions first (communism does this). then you can take it to smaller experiments (communes which survived for long, usually have a low hierarchy). after gathering real world experience, you can slowly increase the size of these experiments. so far none of the countries, which had a socialist government still have a (valid) socialist system.
seems like you are suggesting a more centralised form of government and stronger hierarchical structures than any of the communes i personally know. what is your suggested path to avoid the pitfalls of the past communist governments? what safeguards do you suggest to prevent a (group of) person(s) accumulating power and perverting the government into a dictatorship?
Communes are not communist systems, they are their own separate category.
Correct, because we are talking about Communism, not Communalism.
Soviet Democracy was already good, but Mass Line theory improved upon it.
i give you that: soviet democracy looks pretty neat on paper. lets look at its implementation.
people gather and elect representatives. these representatives in turn elect representatives again as needed. as the system grows, this will gradually form a hierarchical governmental body. in contrast to most democracies, representatives did not get elected for a certain (maximum) timeframe and could always be voted out again. additionally there wiuld not be a desperation of power: they where legislative, executive and judiciary all the same.
1905 the lenin and the bolschevikes introduced such a system. shortly after they only got a minority in the votes. lenin forcefully disbanded the opposition, (possibly rightfully arguing that the burgeoise could not accurately represent the workers) and explicitly excluding the burgeoise from the democratic rights.
Some people say that the end of soviet democracy was in 1918. Lets go with 1921: Martial law was in action, many people where discontent with the bolshevik government, mainly workers and sailors where protesting (kronstadt). this act of rebellion was swiftly crushed by the red army and many people lost their lives. at the same time lenin was still assuring democracy is working as intended.
conclusion: the democracy lasted for about 16 years. in multiple occasions people where forcefully pushed away. this is possible, because a pyramid structure is created by the system. later this form of government was described as "extremely democratic dictatorship of the proletariat". dictatorship does not have to be bad for the people, but it has the tendency to do so.
overall i encourage you to explore socialist systems from the bottom up. start on paper, if it works try it out in the real world. gradually increase the size and dont be afraid to learn and adjust - now failing is still cheap and easy. the soviet democracy might have worked on a smaller scale. but applied to a country the size of udssr it was too much power focussed on too little people.
Error 1: Representatives could be recalled at any time with a recall vote.
Lenin disbanded the liberal parliment because the Soviet System superceded it. You are asking him to have stopped before completing the beginning of the revolution, just shy of successfully implementing a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is absurd.
Kronstadt was a rebellion in the middle of a chaotic civil war. While I will not say it was a good thing to match it with violence, when taken within the historical context it is difficult to side with the Sailors against the forming Socialist Republic. Further still, the Soviet System remained and was not disbanded.
I have, and it does work, and did work. Read Blackshirts and Reds. You additionally ignored the idea of the Mass Line entirely.
point 1:
point 2:
i am not asking to stop in the middle, i am asking to do their homework. if you have a vote, are unhappy with the results, force your way... that means either you don't have the support from the general population or did not properly prepare for the system you had a vote in.
point 3:
well hopefully so!
never mind...
if open opposition, demonstrations, strikes, etc. are not allowed, even faced with violence - democracy has failed. in theory you could vote representatives out, but if you know those with the power are not shy to imprison and kill you it is not dêmos krátos anymore, just krátos.
point 4:*
really? which communist small government are you part of? i am really interested in finding out about modern attempts in communism.
i did. additionally i had to simplify, summarise and choose context a lot. afterall this is neither a history nor politics class, but a lemmy comment below a comic strip.